As you’re watching the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments on TV, you’re seeing television events for which Turner Sports, Disney, and CBS have paid ten billion dollars to broedcast from now through the beginning of the next decade.
The universities you are watching are stable, mainly state schools operating with taxpayer money or private schools, some of which have substantial donor and endowment support.
But keep in mind some of the news happening this week.
Montclair State University, after an outcry over cutting a number of sports at the school, backtracked on the cutting of the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams as part of what the university had called an “innovative realignment” of athletic offerings.
Bryn Athyn College, a small college in suburban Philadelphia which has been around since 1877, announced that it would be cutting every single one of its varsity sports, from basketball to ice hockey to soccer to lacrosse. This, despite the fact that athletic types — “jocks” in the vernacular parlance — make up more than half of the student body.
St. Francis University, a small college in Loretto, Pa., has decided to move down from Division I to non-scholarship Division III beginning in the fall of 2026. This, after the men’s basketball team made the field for the Division I men’s basketball tournament (and, presumably, a cut of the $2 million guaranteed for schools in the Northeast Conference). And this also happened less than a year after hiring former U.S. international Mackenzie Allessie as head field hockey coach.
Allessie had brought in an exciting style of play and, above all, hope to a program which had not made an NCAA Tournament since the founding of the varsity team in 2001. St. Francis finished 10-8 on the season, but had five one-goal losses. Yep, SFU was just five goals from finishing 15-3 in the regular season
And now, the rug is being pulled out from on ther women of the field hockey team as well as the other athletic teams at the school.
It’s particularly painful for field hockey because of the geography of where St. Francis University is. Like the United States, the state of Pennsylvania’s field hockey map has a lot of teams in the east (especially along the Route 422-322 Corridor), a handful in the far west, and a parking lot in the middle.
What does that parking lot look like? There is one field hockey team in District V, two in District VI, and none in District IX or X.
Having a Division I field hockey institution in in District IV, I think, would have gone a long way towards bolstering the game in the entire western half kf the Keystone State and would have built an important bridge in that direction.
Unfortunately, we’re at the point where the NCAA does not seem to be in the business of building bridges.